CHAPTER 30
~T-minus 32:20~
The skies finally burst open late in the afternoon, with Will and Sam still several blocks from home. The rain fell heavy over the barren streets of Patmos, overwhelming the inadequate drainage and flooding several intersections. The rain gave Will some comfort, obscuring their lonely walk back - enough to almost make up for the squish in his shoes. Both of them were soaked to the bone when they finally reached the Scarborough residence, clothes saturated to the point that the downpour was doing little to them. Mrs. Scarborough, paging through a novel and quietly awaiting their return, nearly fell out of her seat when they entered.
Mrs. Scarborough stared at the pool of water gathering just inside of the threshold. "What happened to you two?"
"It's raining," said Will, brushing back his wet hair. "What did you expect?"
"You look like you walked through it," said Mrs. Scarborough. "Didn't you drive? Where's your car?"
"I did, but I'm gonna have to pick the car up later. Long story." Will gave Sam a hard nudge. "Go hop in the shower. No fun being cold and wet."
"Pick it up later?" Mrs. Scarborough watched Sam sprint off down the hall, then turned back to Will. "Is everything all right?"
"Everything is fine," said Will. "You got something to help me dry off?"
“Well...” Mrs. Scarborough tossed Will a ragged old towel, something she kept lying around for the odd project. "...The car?"
"Like I said, it's a long story. You're just going to have to take my word for that."
"Uh...Well, how was it?"
"What? Oh, the day out. It was good." Will wrapped the towel around his shoulders. "I'd even call it enlightening."
"Enlightening?"
"Yeah. You'd be surprised what you can learn about a person in a day, even someone you've known for years. And you'd be surprised what you can learn about a town. That one especially. So much I didn't know about Patmos"
Mrs. Scarborough could only shrug in exasperation. "Well, as long as you enjoyed yourself, who am I to question? I'll get the kettle on for tea." She peeked out of the window. "Someone on the porch. Another friend of yours?"
"Is it Sara again?"
"No, this one's a man."
"A man?" Will caught his breath. "...Just the one?"
"Yes."
Will tried to peek through the window without revealing himself. "Big guy, maybe Asian?"
"No, a short kid who...Will, what is going on?"
"Never mind, I'll see what he wants. And if the water gets done early, I'll take some oolong."
Will eased through the door, sneaking a glimpse through the crack before emerging quickly onto the porch and shutting the door behind him. He had expected an army and found only a damp rat - sad little figure in a wet green blazer propping himself up against the side of the house as though his legs might betray him. He'd clearly spend a while in the rain himself, looking less the confident madman he'd been the night before and more an unkempt purse dog drowned in grain alcohol.
"You?" Will seized the man by the lapels of his blazer. "You come here to intimidate me, Aaron? You got some new weapon to test? Speak up, I'm feeling like a very angry peasant right now."
Aaron blinked at Will, as though he weren't immediately sure what to make of this new situation. "Is that how you welcome someone who's got a gift for you?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" A stale, pungent odor hit Will's nose. "You're drunk."
"And you're perceptive." Aaron batted Will's hands aside and pulled a small bottle of cheap scotch from his blazer. He took a drink, then coughed for several seconds. "Holy hell. How can people guzzle this shit?"
"You know, getting drunk off of brown liquor is a really stupid idea," said Will. "Scrawny brats like you should stick to vodka."
"Oh, shut up," said Aaron. "I didn't come here to take your shit. And after the day I had, I think I'm justified in self-medicating a little."
"Oh, you had a bad day?" Will laughed and knocked Aaron on the shoulder. "I ought to tell you what the last twelve or so hours have been like for me."
"Don't you ever shut up, Scarborough? People like you never shut up. You talk, and you talk, and do you have anything to say?" Aaron leaned against the side of the house. "Let me tell you what happened today. I get this call from ol' Apollo Liston. Little asshole who used to think he was better than me when we were kids."
"Oh, he was definitely better than you."
"Shut your face. They never proved that, he never beat me, did he?" Aaron pressed the scotch bottle to his head. "So my point is that Apollo, Paul, whatever he wants to call himself, he calls me up and tells me that I gotta talk my dad into talking Jameson into stopping the Rudra test. I tell him he's full of shit. So he puts Jameson's kid on, the one no one's seen in years, he tells me that Dr. Richter was crazy and if I don't talk to dad, we're all going to die." He held out the bottle. "You might want some before this next part."
"No thanks," said Will.
"Fine." Aaron swallowed another shot, cringing and gagging as the liquid ran down his throat. "I decide I'm going to prove the Jameson brat wrong, so I do something very stupid. I break into Dr. Richter's office. Couldn't tell you why, really."
"You broke in," said Will. "You're a master criminal now?"
"No, I'm head of security, numbnuts," said Aaron. "Point is, if you'll let me make it, is that I found something really awful. I know something I can't un-know. I'm probably going to go jail when they find out about it - and they will, they know everything, there are no secrets from Jameson. Course, there might not be a jail in a couple days."
"All right," said Will. "Good story. Now why are you telling me?"
"Because I thought you should know about this, too. You're the one who started all this with your party and your rabblerousing, you should know, too. So I'm making you a little gift." Aaron pointed to a small table on which a shoe box sat. "Enjoy."
Will picked up the shoe box. "This is the thing I can't un-know?"
"Yep," said Aaron. "I even threw in fresh batteries."
"Okay," said Will. "But why me? Why not take this to your dad, or someone else at the lab? Someone who can actually do something about it?"
"Oh, my dad's not doing anything to stop this. Look, Jameson called a meeting of his top people for a little tete-a-tete. Dr. Yang - the engineering guy, old man Zhang's guy - he says we should put the project on hold for a month and run more tests. My father, who does not like it when people tell him what to do, says to hell with the plebs and barrel ahead. Dr. Richter...who the hell knows, no one seen him in weeks, but I'm damn sure I know what he'd say. Point is, other than Yang, no one's worried."
"Well...go to Jameson, then. His name's on the damn thing, they have to listen to him."
"Jameson can't stop Rudra anymore. The town can't stop Rudra. Hell, I don't think the President of the United States could stop Rudra at this point. It's an entity, got its own momentum now. It'll happen no matter what we do." Aaron screwed the cap back onto the scotch bottle, opened the shoe box an inch and shoved the bottle inside. "You're going to need that. Trust me."
"Hold on..." Will tried to stop Aaron, but he was already stumbling off down the road, heedless even of the torrential rain. Will pulled the lid off of the shoe box. Inside was an old microcassette recorder, a pair of headphones, and several tapes. He quickly slammed the lid on the box and crammed it under one arm before darting back into the house.
"Is everything all right?" said Mrs. Scarborough.
"Yeah, sure. Dealt with it." Will cleared his throat. "I'm actually going to pass on the tea for now. There's something my, uh, friend thinks I should check out, and I should really get on that."
"Okay." Mrs. Scarborough stared blankly at Will. "What exactly did you do today?"
"Went for a drive and met some very interesting people. Fascinating people." Will took off down the hallway halfway through his comments. "I'll be out for dinner."
Droplets fell from Will's hair as he jogged back to his room, pulling down the blinds and pulling a chair against the door. He did not touch the lights, gripped by some strange fear that any flicker might give away his deeds; instead, he felt around blindly in the box, the recorder sliding around in his damp hands. Slipping the headphones on, he inserted a random tape into the recorder and pressed buttons until the device woke up. Then there was a voice - a restrained, wavering timbre - speaking to him from the darkness:
"End of the first day of phase III of the AEV panel, regarding potential alternatives to atomic energy. It is clear that there are few people here who have any viable ideas. Of the presentations I watched, only Dr. DuFresne's seemed plausible, and even he obviously has little confidence in his theory. Oh, how I wish he would let me see his notes, but he has become a very private man as of late, a far cry from the man I saw battling protesters when I was in college."
Will hit the pause button, a smile creeping onto his face. Here Dr. Richter had been this mysterious, inscrutable figure, always out of reach and out of view, and here his grand idea had been hand-delivered right to Will's doorstep. The fear slowly fading from him, Will flicked on the table lamp and studied the contents of the box more closely. There were around a dozen tapes, all marked with dates and brief descriptors in a rough and zealous scrawl. He pulled out the tape already inserted - "AEV, 1980" it read. Sifting through the tapes, he found one marked "Travel and Philosophy, 1982" - apparently the next in sequence - and inserted it into the recorder. The voice returned, but this time it seemed weary, with the slightest hint of a hard edge:
"I'm not sure if I can put into words exactly what I am feeling now. It's been three days since I returned from my trip through the Soviet satellites. At the time, I was too tired to express my thoughts. They call what I saw a 'stagnation.' No, it's so much more than that. Is this what I've been trying to accomplish? I mean, I tell myself it's not true, but...the Communists, their goals and mine are the same. They tried to create a certain existence for their people, and all they did was cover half the world in some sort of twilight. These people exist, but they're not truly alive. They call it an enlightened, even scientific form of government. Maybe we should leave those formulas out of people's lives, but if that's true, then how are we supposed to fix anything? Surely every problem has a solution, I...uh..."
"...Damn it, this place is so loud. I forgot how insane cities can be in this country. It's not just the noise, it's the colors, the images. It's like New York is screaming at me. These ads...how did everything I own become obsolete or out-of-style in just a few months? I'm looking at this recorder, and it's all I need, but it's so junky. It's not, but...Geez, that noise, I can even hear it up here. Even with the doors closed, it's everywhere. That hum, it's going to drive me mad..."
As he listened, Will sorted through the tapes. They covered Dr. Richter's life from the start of his tenure on the AEV panel to Joshua Jameson's announcement of the project. There was one tape that was unusual - marked "1996," the latest date in the box, but with no title. He popped out the travel tape and slid in the mystery tape, reclining on the bed as Dr. Richter returned. The voice on this tape could have belonged to a different man altogether. The weariness was gone; he spoke with confidence, without a tremble in his syllables, without hemming or stumbling over his words. This was the voice of the man that Joshua Jameson had met, the Dr. Richter who had convinced the world that he could solve all its problems:
"There is an essential truth at play here, one I've been resisting for many years, one which I must acknowledge if only to this tape recorder. For months now, I have been drafting models, running computer simulations, all in an attempt to eliminate or at least reduce the risk of an uncontrolled reaction in the Rudra terminus. However, it appears that Dr. DuFresne was correct all along. The risk simply cannot be overcome. I have come to accept this fact and, beyond that, to embrace it.."
"I came into this life, into this profession, with a fundamental belief that tomorrow can be a sunnier day than today. But there was always something hollow about it. Each passing year has chipped away at this belief, and now I have finally realized why this belief was so hollow. For the first time in our history, we are in a position to meet everyone's needs. There is no requirement for us to compete, to struggle over land and wealth as we did in ages past, and everyone can lead a satisfying, healthy life. By all means, we should be at an end of an age, the age of strife, and the beginning of an age of enlightenment. But sufficiency...this is no longer enough, if it ever was. We are programmed by nature and society alike to want more and more. As a result, this world of plenty is no longer good enough. When we met the people's basic needs, they responded by demanding more, until more became their new basic need. The only way to fill that new need was to deprive others of their needs. We, who enjoy so much, steal from those who have so little because what we have is never enough. And as scientists...no matter what miracles we produce, we can only keep up with this change, only keep that cycle going. It is a terrible loop, and it leads only towards oblivion."
"Once, I believed that society could overcome this primitive need to acquire, that we could, as a people, achieve enlightenment. I was lying to myself. Man's goodness produces only a withered and bitter fruit. Maybe it is only science, the sweeter fruit of man's wisdom, that can save us, but I have lost faith even in this. There is always a price to be paid for progress, something I have learned all too well. But this truth no longer haunts me. In fact, I have decided to view this conflict not as a price, but as a trial. Science, after all, is not good or evil. Its essential quality matches the society that uses it, and soon we will test the character of this society."
"I leave Rudra to the world as my final judgment. If it works as Dr. DuFresne had originally speculated, it will give a thousand years of prosperity to the world. It will be up to the people to determine if they will use this to further the cause of humanity, to reach for enlightenment and that new age, or to chase their hedonism into the abyss. If, on the other hand, it malfunctions as Dr. DuFresne feared, it will terminate all human need once and for all. It no longer concerns me which one transpires, and the choice no longer lies in my hands. Once they thought the end was the domain of God. Instead, I have taken the tools of creation and destruction and handed them to his most foolish creation. Let us see what they do."
The tape threw off an unexpectedly loud click as it reached the end. Will stared at the recorder as though it was an arcane device holding some mystery that his brain could not process.
There was a knock at the door. "Will? Sam's done with the shower. Maybe you'd like to get cleaned up before dinner? We'll be ready in about twenty minutes. Will? Are you okay in there? Hello?"
Will didn't answer. He was lost to reality, staring at the recorder with eyes that saw little. Unconsciously, his hand reached for the bottle of scotch and twisted off the cap.